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Rex Tillerson is not alone. Lots of people have a "bleeping moron” for a boss, a name Tillerson reportedly used to describe President Trump after a particularly frustrating meeting. In my clinical practice I frequently see people reacting to bosses who also fit the bill, bosses with outsized personalities and undersized competence who insure their own success while fostering misery and inevitable failure among underlings. In situations like that all the advice for how to “manage-up” scarcely applies; you’re in crazy-town.

The unfortunate reality faced by too many, and perhaps the entire country according to mental health experts and some senators, is that some bosses are so toxic as to be unmanageable. Instead, they are dangerous. Their reality distortions render them at best survivable. As one patient with such a boss told me, “it’s like he sucks my ability to think right out of my head.” Another said, “the whole office walks around on egg shells not getting anything done.”

Rex Tillerson, U.S. secretary of State, listens to a question at a news conference on Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

These bosses accomplish their toxic alchemy through some combination of the following traits: a short attention span; not caring about other people’s point of view and feelings, oftentimes not even noticing that other people have a point of view and feelings; an inability to accept responsibility for negative outcomes; lying to elevate themselves and their accomplishments; dividing staff, the entire world actually, into all-good in-groups and all-bad out-groups, and blaming all problems on the out-groups; becoming emotionally dysregulated and nasty when stress escalates; seeing everything in terms of their reputation while requiring subordinates to see things the same way.

As a result of these special gifts (please excuse the sarcasm), subordinates often find it impossible to think and plan. Instead, underlings become reactive cauldrons filled with primitive emotion struggling to survive.

So, should your boss be one of these mind-sucking toxic morons, either chronically or temporarily, you've got a problem: how to regain an ability to think; how to still the maelstrom of rageful helplessness so as re-find one’s mind. And what makes this a problem worthy of significant attention is that the bleeping moron is very much in charge. He (sorry to say but it’s usually a he) is still the one with power. As a result you have to find a way back to thought, or get crushed. You have to find a way to survive.

Despite being in charge, these bosses are not worthy of trust or respect. They might not even be particularly knowledgeable. But, never forget, they can reward and punish, as well as being in positions of legitimate authority. Or, in the terms used by French and Raven in their classic 1959 study of social power, while your toxic moron of boss may have neither “Expert” nor “Referent” power, he still has “Coercive,” “Reward” and “Legitimate” power.

In other words, the bleeping moron is still the boss. And if you don’t find a way to hold on to your ability to think, the misery will escalate. You will not be able to find ways to resist and survive. So, here’s something you can do to hold on to your ability to think despite the rageful helplessness such a boss stokes with remarkable efficiency.

You have to remember where you are by resisting an emotional confusion toxic authority figures breed. Specifically, remember, you're at work. Even the most toxic boss is not a parent and the workplace is not a family, even if it feels that way, or especially when it feels that way. Most people when young, and even with the best of parents, experience moments of rage and helplessness. Tantrums are ubiquitous, even if infrequent. “Its not fair!!” and “how could they do that to me?” are common human experiences. And when a toxic boss elicits those feelings one’s entire state of mind follows along. When lost in that rage and unable to think one forgets that that was then and now is now.

So, try to remember that was then and now is now. Just because a toxic boss can elicit states of helpless dependency doesn’t mean one has to stay there. It doesn't mean one is helpless and dependent. The boss has power and is still the boss but that helplessness is a feeling, not a fact. You are not helpless, not completely, even when it feels like you are.

Also remember that feeling helpless is built into the pathology your boss brings to the workplace. And the more you can remember both that your boss has power and that he is crazy-making the more it becomes possible to inhabit a reflective space. It becomes possible to see your current experience as including a powerful emotional resonance with early experiences of being helpless and dependent. Those early emotional memories become the crucibles for the bleeping moron’s toxic alchemy.

You may be in a struggle for survival, one that can cost you dearly, and you have to fight back. However, when you react emotionally, your toxic boss wins and you lose. The best way to survive that struggle is to see your feelings for what they are. That way you can think and remember both that a toxic boss is still a boss with power and that the destabilizing feeling was then and this is now.

After that you can dive into the many useful articles on how to "manage up." If you look you’ll find “how-tos” and listicles to spare. Dana Rousmaniere writing in the Harvard Business Review finds bedrock advice common across all these articles worth repeating. She writes “the most important skill to master is figuring out how to be a genuine source of help — because managing up doesn’t mean sucking up. It means being the most effective employee you can be, creating value for your boss and your company.”

And that is only possible when you see him, or her when that happens, as the one having a slow-burning constant tantrum, rather than having one yourself.